he did not contemplate his own, his wife’s, and his friend’s disgrace, from the contemptible quarrels among the women about the court.
“If you have good reasons,” he writes, “for what you write of the kindness and esteem the Queen has for Mrs. Masham and Mr. Harley, my opinion should be, that my Lord Treasurer and I should tell her Majesty what is good for herself; and if that will not prevail, to be quiet, and to let Mr. Harley and Mrs. Masham do what they please; for I own I am quite tired, and if the Queen can be safe I shall be glad. I hope the Lord Treasurer will be of my mind; and then we shall be much happier than by being in a perpetual struggle.”
At length the mask of affected humility assumed by Mrs. Masham was thrown off entirely; and, confident in the support of her royal mistress, the upstart favourite exhibited all the scorn and insolence which was in her nature. The Duchess expatiates with feminine pertinacity upon the stinging impertinences and insulting condescensions she had to endure from her lately exalted cousin. One instance she dwells on with bitter recollection, for it was the first time the minion of the Queen had dared to show her how little she regarded her.
When having with difficulty obtained an interview with Mrs. Masham, the Duchess upbraided her with her treachery, and observed, that she was certain no good intentions towards herself could have influenced her actions, Abigail replied:—
“... very gravely, that she was sure the Queen, who had always loved me extremely, would always be very kind to me. I was some minutes before I could recover from the surprise with which so extraordinary an answer struck me. To see a woman whom I had raised out of the dust put on such a superior air, and to hear her assure me, by way of consolation, that the Queen would always be very kind to me!—I was stunned to hear her say so strange a thing!”
The Duchess of Marlborough was now, therefore, at open variance with her cousin. Towards her Majesty she stood in a predicament the most curious and unprecedented that perhaps ever existed between sovereign and subject. The amused and astonished court beheld Anne cautiously creeping out of that subjection in which the Duchess had, according to her enemies, long held the timid sovereign.
A confidential friend of the Duchess, Mr. Mainwaring, remarks of her, in one of his letters, that she was totally deficient in that “part of craft which Mr. Hobbes very prettily calls crooked wisdom.”[47] Apt, as she herself expresses it, “to tumble out her mind,” her openness and honesty were appreciated, when at an advanced age, and after she had run the career of five courts—by that experienced judge, the Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who often presumed upon the venerable Duchess’s candour in telling her unpalatable truths, which none but the honest could have borne to hear. It was this uprightness and singleness of mind which rendered the Duchess unwilling to believe in the duplicity and the influence of her cousin. Warned of it by Mr. Mainwaring, it was not until she found in the Queen a defender of Mrs. Masham’s secret marriage, that the Duchess was roused into suspicion. It was then that she communicated her conviction to Lord Godolphin and to Marlborough, and besought their advice and assistance.
The Duke had just then prepared measures for carrying on the war, and had completed every arrangement for his voyage into Holland; the only thing which detained him in England was, says Cunningham, “the quarrel among the women about the court.” He desired his often-offended Duchess “to put an end to those controversies, and to avoid all occasions of suspicion and disgust; and not to suffer herself to grow insolent upon the favour of fortune; “otherwise,” said he, “I shall hardly be able hereafter to excuse your fault, or to justify my own actions, however meritorious.” To which the Duchess replied, “I will take care of those things, so that you need not be in any fear about me; but whoever shall think to remove me out of the Queen’s favour, let them take care lest they remove themselves.”
It was not long before Marlborough perceived that the Duchess was not mistaken in her apprehensions; nor before he became painfully aware of the fact, that services of the greatest magnitude are often not to be weighed against slights and petty provocations.
Queen Anne, however, had some pangs of conscience, in spite of her joy at being emancipated from the thraldom of her haughty Mistress of the Robes, in ill-treating the great general who had filled her reign with glory; but the uninterrupted gossip which she delighted now to indulge in with her waiting-woman compensated for all.